Fun with acting

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When Vince Vaughn speaks, he speaks with a big voice. Born in Minnesota,
raised in Illinois by parents from Ohio, Vaughn hails from the "big voice"
states of the American Midwest. And the guy is a flagpole - 195 centimetres tall
at full stretch. "I'm too tall, circus tall," he quips, letting out a yawn.

Battling the remnants of a cold and refraining from a smoking habit that has
already filled an ashtray with butts, Vaughn is excited by both the box-office
success of his latest film, Dodgeball, and of its prospects come Oscar
time.

The comedy, a broad, knockabout affair rich in underdog themes and
over-the-top gags, casts Vaughn as the owner of a rundown gym facing closure
from the bank and brutal competition from a franchise gym run by a slimy fitness
fascist played by Ben Stiller, who also produced the film.

"The buzz is there," Vaughn says of the film's chances of taking out the
best-film Oscar come February. "The buzz is definitely going around."

Not that Vaughn doesn't take film seriously. With friend Jon Favreau he made
the hit independent film Swingers in 1996, which put them and director
Doug Liman (Go, The Bourne Identity) on the map. In 2001 Vaughn also
did the less successful Made with Favreau, and is busy developing other
independent films, including Break Up, a romantic comedy that has no
gimmick.

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"I've never done a romantic comedy, because it seems they can't just tell a
love story," he says between coughs. "It's always something like a radio station
does a poll and decides these two people will get along, and if they do they get
a million dollars. You don't need all of that to get into a love story."

In Dodgeball, Vaughn plays to his comedy strengths, largely as
straight man to a supporting cast of nerdy gym flies and Stiller's
scene-stealing fitness guru.

After the success of Swingers, Vaughn didn't take to any of the
comedy scripts that came his way, instead steering towards the type of edgier,
independent films he loves, such as Return To Paradise and Clay
Pigeons. He also took a dive into the mainstream with a part in Steven
Spielberg's Jurassic Park: The Lost World, and jumped at the chance to
work with director Gus Van Sant on his widely panned remake of Alfred
Hitchcock's Psycho, a film Vaughn staunchly defends.

After a recent string of comedy films, including Starsky and Hutch,
Old School, Zoolander and the forthcoming Anchorman,
Vaughn saw Dodgeball as a chance to pay homage to his cherished
childhood films.

"One of my favourite movies as a kid was Bad News Bears (1976) with
Walter Matthau (about a foul-mouthed kids' baseball team). I was always a fan of
Revenge of the Nerds and those '80s-style comedies, and this movie
really reminded me of that. I loved the theme of underdogs trying to save their
gym, and how it was symbolic of them looking for a place to be OK, a place to
fit into society."

There are two distinct sides to Vince Vaughn. There's the serious actor who
will talk earnestly and at length about his performance as Norman Bates in
Psycho, where he had to literally copy the movements and mannerisms of
Anthony Perkins.

"I had never worked from that place before. My main background is
improvisation. In Psycho we did some of it shot-for-shot, where I would have to
do identical movements that he did. It was an important experience for me,
because I've never worked on that side of my brain. I've always hung loose and
see what happened in the moment."

Then there's the side of Vince Vaughn that will partake in a spoof of the
prestigious series Inside the Actors Studio
. Both sides form a cohesive whole, he insists."I take acting very seriously as far
as training and studying goes. I believe in method acting. I've taken things
from all different types of acting philosophies and I use different parts of all
of them. It's kind of a Frankenstein thing where you take from everywhere.

"However, that being said, movies, they're not religion. In fact, that's the
joy of it. It's childlike. The greatest gift in movies is imagination, the
ability to try new things. I have a very healthy respect for the craft, but I
always like having a childlike approach where it's fun."

Hence his well-versed defence of the 1998 Psycho remake. "Movies are
not religion, they're not sacred. Songs have been recorded by many different
artists. If one person records a song, should nobody ever sing it again? If a
play is done, should you never do that play again?"

A line in Dodgeball seems to come from Vaughn's soul. A teenage boy
says he wants to impress a girl by making good as a cheerleader. In response,
Vaughn offers a blank stare of incomprehension. "High school's changed a lot
since I was a kid," he says.

Many things have changed in the past few years, he adds. "A million and one,"
in fact. He leaves out the million and offers one.

"You know, when I first moved to Hollywood to act, me and most of the friends
I had really wanted to be good actors. Everyone studied classes. There was
Entertainment Tonight, but there weren't channels dedicated solely to
celebrities, about where they eat, where they shop.

"It's become even more so in recent times. I find the younger generations -
and all generations feel this way about the generations that come after them -
but I feel there's so much more focus and attention on being famous nowadays
than there is on being an actor.

"Most of my friends who have gone on to be successful, none of us really sat
around and talked about, 'Well, one day I'll get a table here' or 'One day I'll
buy this house.' Everyone was trying to become a good actor, talking about what
kind of performances they wanted to give, what kind of movies they wanted to be
a part of.

"Nowadays, the younger kids I've met seem more interested in their fashion,
their image. There's much more consciousness at a younger age about the business
side and the celebrity side. If you saw pictures of me, of Favreau, Cole Hauser
and Rory Cochrane back then, none of us really knew how to dress. It wasn't
important to us. I had a mullet!"